Lucien Burel

Father Jacques de Jesus (Lucien Burel) a Carmelite friar was headmaster of a school in Avon. Young men who were being forced to go to Germany as laborers and appealed to him for help. Father Jacques hid these men along with the Jewish children he wanted to save. He was arrested by the Gestapo and badly mistreated. He died soon after he was liberated by American troops (The above was an excerpt from the below web site)













This post is a tribute to this Carmelite father. He was featured and honored in a Louis Malle film (English titled "Goodbye My Children" "Au revoir les enfants"). Many were the outsanding Catholic heroes of the Holocaust mentioned in the first cite below in an article. Louis Malle finally paid tribute to his former headmaster.

• In Belgium Father Bruno rescued more than 300 Jews in France




• Protestant Pastor Andre Trocme hid several 1000 Jews in silence around the village of Le Chambon a story of amazing courage



• Father Jules-Gerard Saliege



• Father Pierre-Marie Benoit




• Father Jacques headed a school in Avon and hid Jewish boys from the Nazis and was transported when caught to Mathausen and died several weeks later after liberation.The photo to the right features Maurice Schlosser one of the hidden boys on the rocks of Avon.



• Father Pietro Boetto saved at least 800 lives The first website refers to their lives and heroic deeds.

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/catholic_stories/cs0058.html


http://www.gusen.org/pers/bunel01x.htm


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_Bunel_-_Père_Jacques_de_Jesus



http://tree-in-the-sea.blogspot.com/2007/09/remembering-holocaust-era-catholic.html


http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Father_Jacques.html


A further article on Father Jacques





The boy's school in Avon France was a refuge for hiding Jewish youth from the Nazis. He placed the noted Jewish botanist Lucien Weil on the school faculty.





Here are some of the written sources on this amazing hero, Fr. Jacques.


Bernadac Christian, Les Sorciers du Ciel - Le Pere Jacques a Gusen (Lucien Bunel), France Empire, Paris 1969
Carrouges Michel, Père Jacques (Lucien Bunel ... as remembered by his fellow prsioners at GUSEN concentration camp) , The Macmillan Company, New York, 1961
Hugelé, Gavard, Murphy, Gufoni, Sterckx, Bédarida, Choumoff, Maccise, Par la Croix vers la lumière, Le Père Jacques de Jésus 1900-1945, Textes des journées de recontre organisées à la mémoire du Père Jacques, les 9-11 juin et 22-24 septembre 1995, Les Èditions du Cerf, Paris 1999
Murphy Fancis J., Pére Jacques - Resplendent in Victory, Institute of Carmelite Studies (ICS Publications), Washington, D.C. 1998
USHMM, Temporary Exhibition on the Actions of Father Jacques, On-line version, Washington, Spring 1997

Tipping Points

We all of us have seminal moments , influences that propel us to take one fork in the road as opposed to another. Seminal moments are what they are often called and often they are subliminal causes we are not always aware of. I was reminded of these by listening to an audible interview by Don Katz, CEO of audibles.com ,interviewing Jane Fonda. Her tipping point for anti war activist involvement was Kent State and the invasion of Cambodia, seemingly small beginnings and innocuous in nature. I am convinced trhese moments are never small and have impact that know not of at the moment of their origin. They awaken us out of the comfort of the ignorance we once had ,and such awakening forever changes us and we are never the same afterwards. In another post I will describe my tipping point(s). One additional fact about them, they are never obvious but subtle ,often unrecognized, and fully develop over a span of time.